Prompt to Page, Ep. 53: Shauna M. Morgan
===

Carrie: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Prompt to Page podcast, a partnership between the Jessamine County Public Library and the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning. I'm your host, librarian and poet, Carrie Green. Each episode we interview a published writer who shares their favorite writing prompt. Our guest today is Shauna M. Morgan.

Shauna is a poet-scholar and associate professor of creative writing and Africana literature at the University of Kentucky. Her poetry has appeared in A Gathering Together, Interviewing the Caribbean and A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia, and her debut collection Ground Provisions was published by Peepal Tree Press in the United Kingdom.

Shauna attends a small, hopeful provision ground at her home in the East End Artists' Village in Lexington, and she continues to explore the environmental and [00:01:00] cultural linkages between her rural Afro-Indo-Jamaican upbringing and her US-Kentucky life. Welcome, Shauna. Thanks so much for joining us. 

Shauna: I'm so happy to be here.

Thank you. 

Carrie: So, when you responded to our invitation to appear on the podcast, you mentioned that you had a quote from a past episode. I hope it doesn't put you on the spot too much, but I would like to know if you could share that quote. 

Shauna: Sure. Yeah. It's right here on my desk actually. And it's, on this washed out postcard because the sun's been shining on it.

But it was an interview you did with Robin Rajia, who's actually a colleague of mine. And there was something so wonderful. She was sort of talking about everyday engagement with poetry and finding the time and she said something to the effect of, well, what I wrote down was, get in the habit of not [00:02:00] ignoring that impulse toward a creative act.

And I just, it resonated so much, and I just keep it here as a reminder, because I really do believe that poetry is everywhere and in everyday things. And that reminder to not ignore those possibilities, I thought was really beautiful. 

Carrie: Yeah. No, that actually, that was a quote that really resonated with me too.

I try to think about that as well. And I feel like with everything that's going on in the world right now, it is making it really even harder to do that. 

Shauna: Absolutely. I think we can get so burdened and weighed down by all of those things happening around us, you know, and of course we should not ignore that.

You know, we have to have an awareness and be persistent in sort of resisting that looking away. But [00:03:00] at the same time, I, you know, I'm reminded that generations of my forebears created art in times of abject crises, right? And bore witness to what was happening. And even, you know, wrote beautiful and painful and deeply poignant things in those moments.

And so that's something that I hold onto. 

Carrie: Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you for listening and thank you again to Robin for reminding us all of that. 

Shauna: Yes. 

Carrie: So you are a poet and a gardener. 

Shauna: Yes. [Laughter] 

Carrie: So I was just wondering if you could talk about how those roles or activities, the interplay of the two in your life?

Shauna: Yeah. I think I'm more intentional with that now, but I think that gardening, touching the earth, you know, putting my [00:04:00] hands in the soil is sort of something that I cannot not do, you know, and I don't know if that's because I grew up in a rural community among farmers, or, you know, I've always been around and lived with people who were connected to the earth in various ways. 

And I grew up playing outside barefooted in the dirt, right? And so for me, I have to put my hands in the dirt and I have to, you know, be engaged with the natural world. And so it's something that I've always done, you know, found pleasure in.

But now for me, as I mentioned, it's more intentional. I feel that there are things that I can learn, right, from the plants and animals that I'm in community with. And the poet Alexis Pauline Gumbs talks about this at length in so many different wonderful ways. But, you know, I used to just simply write [00:05:00] about my experience engaging with plants and animals.

Right? But now, like I said, that mindfulness is more of a kind of curiosity and a pursuit. Like what does this black raspberry patch have to teach me about my place in the world in this moment, you know? What do these blue winged wasps have to say and tell me, and not that they owe that to me, but I'm curious and I want to learn

from the flora and the fauna that know how to be in harmony with the earth. But I will say that it's a pursuit too. I'm constantly trying to learn, but it's really wonderful to grow something and take lessons from that and then also use whatever, share whatever it is that has been grown.

Yeah. 

Carrie: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think probably the same applies to poetry too, right? 

Shauna: Absolutely. I feel that there in many ways we can talk about poetry in [00:06:00] the same way, right? Where you can, dig, you can plant, you can nurture something from a seedling. The process of writing and pursuing a poem can be spoken of in those terms. 

Absolutely. And maybe that is even a part of my process too, like needing to be in a natural space and engage. And then following that process when I'm writing. 

Carrie: Yeah. And kind of along the same lines, I listened to an interview you did with Katerina Stoykova, on the Accents podcast, and you mentioned another poet and gardener, Chris Mattingly and his practice of planting poems to harvest more poems.

Can you maybe talk about that? 

Shauna: Yeah, that was, I think that was something that Katerina shared and it [00:07:00] stood out to me, as well. And it's, yeah, I mean, the idea is really beautiful. Like to literally plant something that you have written, right? In the ground as this sort of aspirational

thing I think is wonderful. And I guess the lesson I take from that is, you know, often we are constrained in our--even as creative people, right?--in how we imagine ourselves and what we can do with the words that we write. And it's really a lesson to attempt to sort of break those boundaries and really free the imagination, right?

Because it, it's in fact the thing that will allow us to create something beautiful. Including not just in terms of our words, in terms of poetry, but in terms of the kind of world we want to see, you know?

Carrie: Right.

Shauna: I think Robin DG [00:08:00] Kelly refers to it as Freedom Dreams, right? 

What we can imagine, and the possibilities that can grow.

Carrie: Yeah. Yeah. And that seems especially important I think, when the images that we see are not things that we want. 

Shauna: Absolutely. And I think often when we are inundated with those images, imagining something different or beyond what is unfolding in the moment can seem like an impossibility, but we know from our own history that it is not.

Carrie: Right.

Shauna: That we can and, you know, affect some change that will turn the tides. 

Carrie: Mm-hmm. Yeah, so what about prompts? Do they play a role in your writing process? 

Shauna: Yes. I will say that I have to confess that maybe my writing process is a little bit haphazard because I'm looking everywhere and nowhere all [00:09:00] at once.

I will say that prompts are very helpful. And I learn a lot from folks who talk about how they use prompts in terms of like literally getting the prompt and setting the timer and not stopping their writing and doing all that. I think that is wonderful and useful. 

And when I'm writing in community groups, with my writing circle, for example, Blood Root Ink has a Writing What Is circle. It's really good to write with others and have a shared prompt. There's a kind of urgency and also a kind of joy in writing, you know, in a collective like that. 

And I'm writing on my own with poetry, I think my prompt tends to be the everyday, the mundane, the, you know, the anthurium that has just unfolded a new flower and the excitement in that, and I seek those things.

I've recently [00:10:00] started writing creative nonfiction sort of prose in the direction of memoir, and I've found it really necessary to have a prompt to guide me in a way that poetry doesn't, you know, sort of demand that I have a prompt. I think I've learned to find prompts in the natural world and in my environment, but with writing creative nonfiction, it's been really good to just, you know, have day 12 and you know, do you remember, write what you remember about your seventh birthday or something like that?

Carrie: Mm-hmm. 

Shauna: Yeah. 

Carrie: Do you think it's because it's a new form for you or do you think it's because, I don't know, that you're dealing with your whole life and you've got to figure out what you want to write about. 

Shauna: Yeah. I think it must be a little bit of both. I think, you know, it is having that sort of vast archive of a [00:11:00] life and figuring out where to start, where to pinpoint a starting place.

You know, even in my poetry, I utilize memory a lot and the sensory. Yeah. But I think working in this new form and with an archive that seems to demand so many words, I think the prompts help to guide me. 

Carrie: Yeah. Well, do you have a favorite or some favorite prompts that you'd like to share? 

Shauna: Yes, I do.

This was a prompt that I was in a workshop with Frank X. Walker. This was many, many, many years ago, over, maybe longer than a decade ago, and I call it the weight prompt, but I often return to this prompt because it feels very generative and there are sort of steps. [00:12:00] And then when I was also kind of venturing seriously back into poetry after being a strict, you know, scholarly writer for a very long time, it was very helpful, a very helpful start.

And so it's the weight prompt. The question is really how much do you weigh? Which was sort of alarming for me at first. You know, as you know, resisting that sort of, all those societal ideas around weight. But really you have two columns and the first column is the thing, you know, you make a list of things that feel heavy or burdensome in some way, things that weigh you down.

And the second column are things that give you the opposite effect. Things that make you feel light or free in some way, and so you make this, you know, it could be, you know, five to ten lists and [00:13:00] two columns, and you can, from there you have, you know, some starts, but you can also even, you know, push it further and create a list poem, for example.

And you could even go so far as to say that, you know, each thing expressed must be related to its counterpart on the other side of the column. And so you are sort of creating a list of things that you can then blend or fold together in a poem with, you know, some complexity. So, you know, one example could be, I tried to do it this morning actually.

The first thing I wrote was "my brother's absent voice." And in the other column that was my sort of light column was "my nephew's laugh." And so those things are related, right? My brother who has passed and sort of missing his [00:14:00] voice is the thing that is so burdensome. 

And my nephew's, his son's laugh, sort of is the light thing that also pulls me to him, so, you know. I love that prompt because it can be so generative. It, you can make an entire list and you can pull, you know, two things and, and work from there. Or you can make an entire poem of these burdensome light things.

Yeah. 

Carrie: Yeah. That's a great prompt. Did you say that you would start with one list and then go to the other? Or were you kind of working back and forth? Or maybe it doesn't matter, maybe if you would 

Shauna: Yeah, I've, I've done it both ways where, you know, some days the things that are really burdensome will just come immediately. And then I'll make the second list of things that are light and maybe some of those [00:15:00] things aren't related. 

And then I'll do the next step and sort of see what the companions might be. And sometimes it's, you know, yeah, I write that heavy, burdensome thing, and then I look for the related thing in that moment that will add the lightness.

Carrie: Yeah. That seems like also that kind of takes the pressure off the emotional pressure off too, if you're always balancing it out with something on the light side as well. 

Shauna: Yes, and even if it's not directly related, I think what it does is that it reminds you of just how deeply complex and, you know 
nuanced our experiences can be.

And it also makes room for us to simply write that burdensome thing down, but not [00:16:00] necessarily pursue something creative around it in that moment if we don't want to. Right? So that's the other thing is that you generate a list. It's there, you've sort of laid it down.

There's something beautiful and relieving about setting it down and then you make the choice whether you want to push it further or simply let it stay there for a time. 

Carrie: Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's a great prompt. Thank you for sharing it. 

Shauna: Yeah, I'm happy to. Thank you. 

Carrie: So you mentioned that you are also a scholarly writer.

So I'm just curious about your move into the creative work, or were you writing creatively all along? I guess just tell us about. 

Shauna: Yeah. Thank you for that.

Thank you for asking. Yeah. I have always been a creative writer for as long as I've known myself, I've written, you know, stories, poems, [00:17:00] made up songs, from a very early age. 

And so I got a master's in poetry and creative writing right after, immediately after undergrad, probably when I was not as prepared to do it.

Carrie: Yeah.

Shauna: But I was always pursuing writing in some way. But I also worked in, you know, I was a student leader and worked in sort of student affairs type things at a university and had mentors who moved me in that way.

And so I was always sort of in this academic, student-connected learning, educational space. And I knew I wanted to study literature. I knew I wanted, I knew I wanted to read. [Laughter] And that is essentially what I think pulled me into doing a PhD and pursuing the academic life, but I was always writing creatively [00:18:00]. 

And when I was, working on my PhD, it was difficult to sort of find my creative voice. And I visited an elementary school classroom to talk about poetry, and something opened. And in that moment I said, there is no way I could ever have a pause again in, you know, my creative work. 

And yeah. So I, you know, still actively pursue that scholarly work because I'm a reader and I love to see what other writers are doing, and I like to say something about that.

But really I am, you know, the thing that I can't ever stop doing, is writing poetry. 

Carrie: Yeah. That's so cool that it was visiting an elementary school classroom too, that reopened your eyes to it. 

Shauna: And I am so grateful to have that opportunity, [00:19:00] and I think that one of the things about my work as a writer I think is being connected with my community, whether it's my neighbor next door or the mail carrier, or you know, a classroom or you know, some local artists. 

I think it's so, it's so meaningful and that was a wonderful lesson, and I will always go to an elementary school and there's something that reminder about the imaginative possibility, you know? 

Carrie: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, do you have any final writing tips that you would like to give our listeners?

Shauna: Sure. I think it's important to read. I think reading whatever it is, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, you know, the Sunday comics, whatever it may be. Read and be in community in that way, but [00:20:00] also, you know, be in community with the land and space around you, whether that's an urban setting or elsewhere.

And that includes, you know, the people we share this planet with. 

Carrie: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Shauna, for coming and talking to us today. We really appreciate it. 

Shauna: Thank you, Carrie. It was lovely chatting with you.

Carrie: Thank you for listening to Prompt to Page. To learn more about the Jessamine County Public Library, visit jesspublib.org. Find the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning at carnegiecenterlex.org. Our music is by Archipelago, an all instrumental musical collaboration between three Lexington based university professors.

Find out more about Archipelago: Songs from Quarantine Volumes One and Two at the links on [00:21:00] our podcast website.